＂The Experts＂ vs Generalists in Politics, Science, & Law w⧸Eva Chipiuk ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with a friend of mine, Dr. Kelly, to talk about her experience with the Vaxx legislation that was passed in 2011. We talk about how she fought for public health and privacy rights, and how she became a voice for the voiceless and voiceless.
Transcript
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and actually uh to your point about section six the uh mobility rights that's what you know that
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meme on the internet of like what radicalized you this is what radicalized me in the summer of 21
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uh we were going to visit my wife's family in pei and that was right when they were doing the this
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was before the the vax passes but but they were doing the maritime bubble and do you remember
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that how is that constitutional yeah it was nonsense right and so i was that nobody exactly
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and i i wrote a big email and maybe one day i'll find it i wrote a huge email to the to the to the
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premier and i don't think it got answered but um but i laid out my rationale i was like this does
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this seems to go against section six this seems to go against this and that and what they were
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making you do at the time was uh essentially you were supposed to upload a picture of your
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vaccination records to this website that they created that had a database that was being
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hosted somewhere offshore like it wasn't even a government site and and i put all that into the
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email like how am i supposed to know that like even if i was on board with this which i'm not
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how am i supposed to know that any information i upload to the site remains secure it's not leaked
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somewhere else this is not a guf like a.gc or whatever.pei website um yeah it was a mess it was
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a mess and like no one cared i don't know if they cared because this is what i'm learning the more
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i'm involved is i think maybe sometimes they didn't even know like you might have brought up
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some points they're like oh yeah where are we storing this if you look around and i don't mean
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to be disrespectful or disparaging but kind of look at some of the people that are elected officials
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again i'm not trying to be disparaging but if right most regular canadians and i'd say most
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regular canadians don't really appreciate and understand these things which is fair like we
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already talked about this is not in their daily wheelhouse do you really expect elected officials
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that kind of have the same background to automatically know all these things when they
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get elected particularly at a local level um that's what i'm learning a lot about because
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right now there's been a lot of um talk about the human rights and having washrooms uh like
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unisex or something i really think that people in small communities don't understand so they're like
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oh we don't want to be sued so let's just do this and that right the more i'm involved the more
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i'm understanding that's actually the case so you might have brought something to their attention
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that they didn't really know about but privacy rights is something that possibly they didn't even
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consider crazy so let's yeah it's uh i think elevating the conversation is so important so one
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thing i've noticed is uh there is a tend kind of in academia for hyper specialization where people
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will take six years and they'll just dive deep and they'll be an expert in this one tiny little
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field but if you go anywhere outside of that they're functionally blind to how that interacts and i think
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you get a little bit of that with certain politicians that they know their area super well but we're we're
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lacking some some there's a term called deep generalists these are people who have a
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like a very deep practical sense of how how the world works feel like if we add a few more of
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those in politics um that would just help glue things together it'd help kind of get people out
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of their silos because i think the deferring to experts are like well it's like i don't know enough
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to even like do a little bit of critical thinking so you defer it to somebody else and there's no like
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checking up on it there's no accountability there's no like you 100 trust that this one random expert
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came to a certain conclusion like well what's the rationale on that like how do we make sure that
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they're not just off because of their own biases so we we need more of this crosstalk
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it's incredibly important and i think that's a detriment to what we see and what's going on and
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i think that extends of not just politics and i hadn't really thought about it in politics but i
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think you're spot on but in science and in law i see like we saw this um during covid again going back
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to that we had it was if you weren't uh an immunologist then you you can't talk and the
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immunologist is like i don't know the epidemiologist should be the one we're asking the epidemiologist
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is like i'm not a vaccinologist the vaccinologist is like no it's public health public and who like
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that's if you actually look at what happened there was a lot of that and if a lay person wasn't any of
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those but the experts were pointing fingers at each other as well um and that's why i think you didn't
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see too many lawyers jumping up and taking these on because these were incredibly complicated
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high profile public issues as well but very specialized too so a lot of people are specialized
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in their practice so why would they take away from their comfort and knowledge and then jump into
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something different so i think that's crossed the board that we that that's causing problem unless
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you're you know a trades person that is supposed to be doing you know maybe if you're an electricity
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electrician you shouldn't be jumping into plumbing i think that's appropriate but i think having a bit
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i but i i suspect an electrician can give you some good guidance on a plumbing whereas in law you almost
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don't it's like not my area not my specialty ask somebody else and i don't think that's helpful like
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then we don't build a house if nobody knows anything with that same kind of analogy yeah it's it feels like
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it maybe has to do with the with the stakes and the whole uh the whole uh cya aspect of it maybe from
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from a from a law perspective but i was it's funny you say that because i was gonna say we need more
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general contractors in the government rather than uh rather than uh drama teachers but